Deep Green, Robot Pool Shark

Michael
Greenspan of Queen's Univerisity has developed
a pool-playing robot called Deep Green. According to Greenspan, pool
experts predicted it was unlikely a robot could play pool as well as a
human, while fellow robot researchers underestimated the complexity of
doing so.
But after five years of work, Deep
Green is equipped with a vision
system that can identify striped and solid balls, track
sphere dipoles (PDF format), and achieve other feats of pool-related
image processing. Greenspan's vision research resulted in at least one image
recognition patent.
The robot also has an understanding of physics that allows it rival any
human player at making a shot. Even expert human players miss
shots frequently while Deep Green has an almost perfect record. Current
work is being done at the strategy level and it is
expected that Deep Green will be able to easily beat any human at the
game of pool.